The Raconteurs mark 20 years of Broken Boy Soldiers with Irving Plaza

By Grace Kim

On December 11, Third Man Records, Jack White’s label, will release a 20th-anniversary edition of The Raconteurs’ debut album, Broken Boy Soldiers, on opaque green vinyl. Third Man will sell the record directly before selected independent record stores receive it on December 18.

Third Man’s digital deluxe edition—an expanded release—pairs the original 10-song album with the band’s complete first American concert at Irving Plaza in New York City. The band recorded the Irving Plaza concert in 2006 during its American live debut, with Jack White, Brendan Benson, Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler still at the start of their shared musical project.

Three previously unreleased encore performances—songs recorded for the concert’s closing sequence—extend the live document:

• “It Ain’t Easy,” identified as a David Bowie-associated classic.
• “Blue Veins,” the band’s own blues-rock song.
• “Headin’ for the Texas Border,” a Flamin’ Groovies cover.

What changes for Raconteurs listeners?

Collectors buying the green vinyl receive the 10-song album on a new colour. Digital listeners get the complete Irving Plaza performance, including the three unreleased encores and a Love cover absent from the studio track list. The package turns a reissue into a document of how the band played together.

Third Man Records’ account of the Raconteurs’ formation begins with four established musicians. White was already fronting The White Stripes, Benson had built a solo career as an inventive songwriter, and Lawrence and Keeler brought the rhythmic drive of garage-rock favourites The Greenhornes. The four joined to make guitar-driven music they loved, without chasing fashion.

Broken Boy Soldiers records that spontaneous, loud and direct approach. It now reads as one of the early touchstones of 2000s rock. “Steady, As She Goes” anchors the record with a recognisable bass line and a large chorus, while “Hands,” “Level” and “Broken Boy Soldier” sharpen its mix of weighty guitars, clear melodies and unpredictable arrangements.

The anniversary package also arrives after a rare return to the stage. At an October Jack White concert at The Truth in Nashville, the four musicians performed together for the first time in nearly seven years. Their five-song encore moved through “Steady, As She Goes,” “Hands,” “Level,” “Broken Boy Soldier” and “Carolina Drama.”

The reunion is short, but it restores the original quartet’s shared chemistry to the anniversary story. These are the same four musicians who shaped the 2006 document, and their October set gives fans a useful point of comparison with the Irving Plaza performance.

The Irving Plaza recording first appeared in abbreviated form through Third Man’s Vault No. 30 collection. The complete programme includes “A House Is Not a Motel,” which Love first recorded. Together with the Bowie-associated and Flamin’ Groovies covers, that song places the band’s writing beside several sources that fed their sound.

Across the concert, garage rock—raw, guitar-centred rock associated with independent scenes—meets blues, psychedelia and classic pop songwriting. The mixture explains how the material can feel controlled and spontaneous at once. The performances supply the evidence: four musicians sharing arrangements, rhythm and volume without disguising the pleasure of the exchange.

Track listing

• Broken Boy Soldiers (10 tracks): “Steady, As She Goes”; “Hands”; “Broken Boy Soldier”; “Intimate Secretary”; “Together”; “Level”; “Store Bought Bones”; “Yellow Sun”; “Call It a Day”; “Blue Veins.”
• Live at Irving Plaza (14 tracks): “Level”; “Intimate Secretary”; “Hands”; “Steady, As She Goes”; “Together”; “A House Is Not a Motel” (Love cover); “Store Bought Bones”; “Call It a Day”; “Yellow Sun”; “Broken Boy Soldier”; “Five on the Five”; “It Ain’t Easy” (David Bowie-associated cover); “Blue Veins”; “Headin’ for the Texas Border” (Flamin’ Groovies cover).

At 20 years, the strongest case for the reissue is the concert’s evidence of collective chemistry. The practical gain is a fuller account of The Raconteurs’ development: not only what they recorded, but how the original quartet shared a stage.